^ On
a 26 November:2007 The
Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issues a Notification
concerning imprecisions and errors contained in the books Jesucristo
liberador. Lectura histórico-teológica de Jesús de
Nazaret and La fe en Jesucristo. Ensayo desde las víctimas
by liberation
theologian Father Jon
Sobrino, SJ [27 Dec 1938~]. —(070316)2001
In Nepal, King Gyanendra declares a state of emergency after attacks by
Maoists rebels kill at least 76 soldiers and policemen since 23 November
2001, including, the previous night, five soldiers, 28 police officers and
the chief district officer in Solukhumbu, 200 km north of Katmandu. The
rebels also suffered heavy casualties. On 23 November, rebels broke off
a four-month cease-fire and launched assaults across the kingdom. The rebel
hide-outs are concentrated mostly in the remote hills of midwest Nepal.
The Maoist guerrillas fashion themselves after Peru's Shining Path guerrillas.
They are seeking an end to the constitutional monarchy and the creation
of a socialist republic. Their insurgency, launched in 1996, has claimed
more than 1800 lives. 2000 By a huge margin Haiti's
presidential election returns former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to
power. 2000 In the Romanian presidential election,
to succeed Emil Constantinescu, Ion Iliescu, 70, finishes first with 36%
of the vote. In second place comes ultranationalist racist Corneliu Vadim
Tudor, 51, with 28%. The 10 December runoff election would be won by Iliescu.
He is a Soviet-educated engineer who was president from 1990 to 1996. He
had been close to Ceausescu until the early 1970s, but later led the revolt
to topple the Communist dictator. 2000 Florida Secretary
of State Katherine Harris, a Republican, certifies Republican George W.
Bush the winner over Democrat Al Gore in the state's presidential balloting
by a 537-vote margin.

^1999
Elian González is released from hospital
Shipwreck survivor, Elian González,
5, found atop an inner tube off Fort Lauderdale by a pair of men who
had gone fishing, is released from Joe Dimaggio Children's Hospital
in Hollywood, Florida, after treatment for sunburn and dehydration.
The youngster, wearing new clothes
and a baseball cap, appears shaken and weak as he stands between two
cousins before a throng of photographers and reporters. Doctors say
that they are amazed that the child, who they believe went without
water for as long as two days, survived. "God wanted him here
for freedom,'' says Marisleysis González, 21, Elian's second
cousin, who will mother him during the months that he will stay in
Miami.. "And he's here and he will get it [freedom].'' Well,
in the end, it would not quite turn out that way.
Elian, who says that dolphins helped
him stay afloat, does not yet realize that his mother, Elizabeth Broton
Rodriguez, 28, is among the 11 passengers who drowned when the overloaded
boat capsized.
"She wanted everything a mother
could want for her son,'' says Georgina Cid, Elian's great-aunt, in
a phone interview. "She dedicated herself to him.'' Although
the boy's parents were separated, Cid says, his mother remained in
contact with her husband and his family. Cid says that the boy's father,
Juan Miguel González, works at a hotel in Varadero, the famed
resort town about an hour and a half east of Havana.
Family members say that they are willing
to help the boy's father seek legal entry to the United States to
reunite him with his son. The family says that Elian is still frightened
by his new surroundings and is slowly meeting relatives, some of whom
knew him through visits to Cuba and through pictures and videotapes.
Relatives say that the boy is able
to say little about his experience "He just said the boat turned
over,'' says his cousin Marisleysis González.
Meanwhile militant anti-Castro Cuban
exiles have made Elian into a poster boy for their cause, a move that
will eventually backfire.

1997 CompUSA announces it would no longer sell a violent
computer game called "Postal," which featured a berserk gunman who shot
innocent bystanders. A number of retailers had declined to carry the ultra-violent
game. Despite its name, the game did not feature any postal workers. 1997 Swedish telecommunications company L.M. Ericsson announces
that it has developed technology to provide simultaneous telephone service
and Internet access over the same phone line. Ericsson said the new technology
would increase the average speed for home Internet users by at least four
times. 1991 The US abandons Clark Air Base in the
Philippines, one of its oldest and largest overseas bases, which was damaged
by an eruption of volcano Pinatubo.. 1991 Condoms
are handed out to thousands of NY High School students 1990
El primer ministro de Polonia Tadeusz Mazowiecki dimite tras su fracaso
en las primeras elecciones democráticas a la presidencia. 1990 Japanese business giant Matsushita Electric Industrial
Co. agreed to acquire MCA Inc. for $6.6 billion. 1990
Mikhail Gorbachev tells Iraq to get out of Kuwait. 1989
Descubren el quásar más alejado de la Tierra, a 14'000 millones
de años luz. 1989 El político indio
Rajiv Gandhi pierde la mayoría absoluta en las elecciones.

1988 PLO leader refused entry
into the US
Yasser Arafat, founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),
is denied a request for a visa so that he could travel to New York
City and address a United Nations session. American authorities cite
his support of terrorism against Israel and the United States as the
motive for the refusal. However, during the next few years, to the
surprise of American and Israeli authorities, Arafat, who began his
career as an uncompromising Palestinian resistance leader, begins
to seek diplomatic solutions to his quest for a Palestinian homeland.
Arafat persuades the PLO to formally acknowledge the right of Israel
to co-exist with the independent state of Palestine, and in 1993 signs
the historic Israel-Palestinian Declaration of Principles along with
Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1994, Arafat and Rabin sign
a major peace agreement granting Palestine limited self-government
in former territories occupied by Israel. In 1995, Arafat shares the
Nobel Peace Prize along with Rabin and Israeli foreign minister Shimon
Peres for their work toward peace in Israel and the occupied territories.

1985 Movie-star-turned-conservative-hero Ronald Reagan
adds the title of record-setting author to his resume, as Random House handed
the president an unprecedented $3 million for the rights to publish his
autobiography. 1983 Heathrow Airport, robbed of
6800 gold bars worth $38.7 million 1982 Yasuhiro
Nakasone is elected the 71st Japanese prime minister, succeeding Zenko Suzuki.

^1982 VisiCorp announces VisiOn, a graphical
user interface that allowed personal computers to multitask and share
information between applications. At the time, VisiCorp was one of
the market's largest software publishers, due to the runaway success
of VisiCalc, the world's first spreadsheet program. In the early 1980s,
several companies were racing to develop a mouse-driven graphical
user interface that would allow users to multitask. VisiOn was one
of only a few entries in the field, including Microsoft Windows. VisiOn
was released in 1983 but failed to catch on. Windows 1.0 hit the market
in 1985.

1975 Fromme guilty of attempted
assassination of President Ford
A federal jury in Sacramento, California, finds Lynette Alice Fromme,
also known as "Squeaky" Fromme, guilty of attempting to assassinate
President Gerald R. Ford. On September 5, a Secret Service agent wrested
a pistol from Fromme, who brandished the weapon during a public appearance
of President Ford in Sacramento. In the ensuing trial, Fromme, a follower
of incarcerated cult leader Charles Manson, pleaded not guilty to
the attempted assassination charge, arguing that although her gun
contained bullets, it had not been cocked, and therefore she had not
intended to shoot the president. In December of 1987, Fromme, who
remains a dedicated disciple of Charles Manson, escapes from prison
but is captured less than two days later.

^1975 NYC gets federal bailout
With New York City spiraling toward
fiscal disaster, President Gerald Ford proposes a $2.3 billion aid
package designed to address the city's "seasonal cash needs." The
president's plan, passed a little less than a month later, made federal
money available to New York in any of the ensuing three years. While
Mayor Abraham D. Beame praised Ford's announcement, a few New Yorkers
greeted the news with a Bronx cheer, grousing about the attendant
tax hikes which threatened to further erode the city's private sector
and drive away wealthy residents to tax havens in New Jersey. Whatever
the merits of these complaints, the city, saddled with a multi-million-dollar
deficit that threatened to balloon to $1.3 billion by March 1976,
seemingly had little choice but to accept federal help.

1973 Nixon's personal sec, Rose Mary Woods, tells a federal
court she accidentally caused part of 18-minute gap in a key Watergate tape
1970 During a 10-day visit to the Philippines,
Pope Paul VI is attacked by a knife-wielding man in Manilla. The pontiff
is unhurt. 1966 1st major tidal power plant opens
at Rance estuary, France.

1965 France becomes the world's
3rd space power From
Hammaguira, the launch facility in the Sahara Desert of southern Algeria,
France successfully launches the Diamant-A rocket into space, becoming
the world's third space power after the Soviet Union and the United
States. The Diamant-A and its technological payload, Asterix-1 , were
constructed by the National Center for the Study of Space (CNES),
a French equivalent of NASA established by French President Charles
de Gaulle in December of 1961. Asterix-1
weighed 42 kilograms and orbited Earth with an apogee of 1697 kilometers
and a perigee of 527 kilometers.
Ten days after the successful launch of the Diamant rocket, French
scientists, working in cooperation with NASA engineers in California,
successfully launch the first French satellite, FR-1, into orbit around
the earth aboard a US Scout rocket.

1957 US President Eisenhower suffers a minor stroke.

^1950 In Korea, Chinese turn back UN "End the War"
offensive. In
some of the fiercest fighting of the Korean War, thousands of communist
Chinese troops launch massive counterattacks against US and Republic
of Korea (ROK) troops, driving the Allied forces before them and putting
an end to any thoughts for a quick or conclusive US victory. When
the counterattacks had been stemmed, US and ROK forces had been driven
from North Korea and the war settled into a grinding and frustrating
stalemate for the next two-and-a-half years.
In the weeks prior to the Chinese attacks, ROK and US forces, under
the command of General Douglas MacArthur, had succeeded in driving
deeper into North Korea and were nearing the border with the People's
Republic of China (PRC). The PRC issued warnings that the Allied forces
should keep their distance, and beginning in October 1950 troops from
the Chinese People's Liberation Army began to cross the border to
assist their North Korean ally. Their numbers grew to around 300'000
by early November. Some bloody encounters occurred between the Chinese
and ROK and US forces, but the Chinese troops suddenly broke off offensive
operations on 06 November. This spurred MacArthur, who had always
discounted the military effectiveness of the Chinese troops, to propose
a massive new offensive by US and ROK forces. Alternately referred
to as the "End the War" or "Home by Christmas" offensive, the attack
began on 24 November. The offensive almost immediately encountered
heavy resistance, and by 26 November the Chinese were launching destructive
counterattacks along a 40-km front. By December, US and ROK forces
had been pushed out of North Korea. Eventually, US and ROK forces
stopped the Chinese troops and the war settled into a military stalemate.
The massive Chinese attack brought
an end to any thoughts that US boys would be "home by Christmas."
It also raised the specter of the war expanding beyond the borders
of the Korean peninsula, something US policymakers-leery of becoming
entangled in a land war in Asia that might escalate into a nuclear
confrontation with the Soviets-were anxious to avoid.

^1941 Japanese fleet sails for Pearl Harbor
A Japanese fleet of six aircraft carriers,
commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, leaves Hitokapu Bay under
strict radio silence. The surprise attack was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's
idea. The Commander in Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet had been
stewing over the idea since November 1940, two months after Japan
signed the Tripartite Pact that aligned them with Germany and Italy.
Yamamoto's Pearl Harbor idea
was inspired by two things: a prophetic book and a historic attack.
The book was The Great Pacific War, written in 1925 by Hector
Bywater, a British naval authority. It was a realistic account of
a clash between the United States and Japan that begins with the Japanese
destruction of the US fleet and proceeds to the Japanese attacks on
Guam and the Philippines. To Yamamoto, the book's plot almost seemed
like a blueprint for war. And when the Royal Air Force attacked and
successfully debilitated the Italian fleet at Taranto on November
11, 1940, Yamamoto was convinced that Bywater's fiction could become
reality. He started making plans at once.
Yamamoto, who studied English at Harvard University, did not underestimate
the Americans. He said that if "hostilities break out between Japan
and the United States, it would not be enough that we take Guam and
the Philippines . . . we would have to march into Washington and dictate
the terms of peace in the White House." He understood this would be
virtually impossible but also believed that waiting for the Americans
to strike first would be playing into US strengths. Planning the Pearl
Harbor attack and organizing the First Air Fleet took up much of 1941.
When the fleet finally sailed on November 26, the mood was tense.
The director of the First Fleet, Vice Admiral Nagumo, not only lacked
experience with naval aviation but openly opposed the attack. Yamamoto
sat in his flagship headquarters in Japanese waters, anxiously awaiting
the results of his Pearl Harbor brainchild.

1941 FDR restores Thanksgiving
to last Thursday in November.
For the first time in American history, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving
Day. The tradition of celebrating the holiday on Thursday dates back
to the early history of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies,
when post-harvest holidays were celebrated on the weekday regularly
set aside as "Lecture Day," a mid-week church meeting where topical
sermons were presented. Thanksgiving became an annual custom throughout
New England by the mid-seventeenth-century, and in 1777, the Continental
Congress declared the first national American thanksgiving following
the Patriot victory at Saratoga — to be celebrated in December.
In 1789, President George Washington became the first president to
proclaim the Thanksgiving holiday, when, at the request of Congress,
he proclaimed 26 November, a Tuesday, as a day of national thanksgiving
for the US Constitution. However,
it was not until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving
to fall on the last Thursday of November, that the traditional holiday
day was celebrated nationally. With a few deviations, Lincoln's precedent
was followed annually by every subsequent president — until
1939. In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt departed from tradition by declaring
23 November, the next to last Thursday that year, as Thanksgiving
Day. Considerable controversy surrounded this deviation from tradition,
and some Americans refused to honor Roosevelt's declaration. For the
next two years, Roosevelt repeated the unpopular proclamation, but
on 26 November 1941, he admits his mistake and signs a bill into law
making the last Thursday in November the national holiday of Thanksgiving
Day forever. The next day, the last Thursday in November, Thanksgiving
is celebrated across America.

^1927 Ford Model A announced
The Ford Motor Company announces the
introduction of the Model A, the first new Ford to enter the market
since the Model T was first introduced in 1908. The hugely successful
Model T revolutionized the automobile industry, and over fifteen million
copies of the "Thin Lizzy" were sold in its nineteen years of production.
By 1927, the popularity of the outdated Model T was rapidly waning.
Improved, but basically unchanged for its two-decade reign, it was
losing ground to the more stylish and powerful motor cars offered
by Ford's competitors. In May of 1927, Ford plants across the country
closed, as the company began an intensive development of the more
refined and modern Model A. The vastly improved Model A had elegant
Lincoln-like styling on a smaller scale, and used a capable 200.5-cubic-inch
4-cylinder engine that produced 40 horsepower. With prices starting
at $460, nearly five million Model As, in several body styles and
a variety of colors, rolled onto America's highways until production
ended in early 1932.

^1922 King Tut's tomb opened after 3000 years.
In Egypt's Valley of the Kings, British
archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first to
enter King Tutankhamen's tomb in more than 3000 years. Tutankhamen's
sealed burial chambers were miraculously intact, and inside was a
collection of several thousand priceless objects, including a gold
coffin containing the mummy of the teenage king.
When Carter first arrived in Egypt, in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian
tombs had been discovered, and the majority of these had been hopelessly
plundered by tomb raiders over the millennia. However, Carter was
a brilliant excavator, and in the first years of the 20th century
he discovered the tombs of Queen Hatshepsut and King Thutmose IV.
Around 1907, he became associated with the Earl of Carnarvon, a collector
of antiquities who commissioned Carter to supervise excavations in
the Valley of the Kings. By 1913, most experts felt there was nothing
in the Valley left to be uncovered. Carter, however, persisted in
his efforts, convinced that the tomb of the little-known King Tutankhamen
might still be found. King Tutankhamen
was enthroned in 1333 B.C. when he was still a child. He died a decade
later at the age of 18 and thus made only a faint impression on the
history of ancient Egypt. In the 13th century B.C., Tutankhamen and
the other "Amarna" kings were publicly condemned, and most records
of them were destroyed — including the location of Tutankhamen's
tomb. A century later, in the 12th century B.C., workers building
a tomb for Ramses VI inadvertently covered Tutankhamen's tomb with
a deep layer of chips, further protecting it from future discovery.
After World War I, Carter began an
intensive search for Tutankhamen's tomb and on 04 November 1922, discovered
a step leading to its entrance. Lord Carnarvon rushed to Egypt, and
on 23 November they broke through a mud-brick door, revealing the
passageway that led to Tutankhamen's tomb. There was evidence that
robbers had entered the structure at some point, and the archaeologists
feared they had discovered yet another pillaged tomb. However, on
26 November they break through another door, and Carter leans in with
a candle to take a look. Behind him, Lord Carnarvon asks, "Can you
see anything?" Carter replies, "Yes, wonderful things."
It was the antechamber of Tutankhamen's tomb, and it was gloriously
untouched. The dusty floor still showed the footprints of the tomb
builders who left the room more than 3000 years before. Apparently,
the robbers who had broken into Tutankhamen's tomb had done so soon
after it was completed and were caught before moving into the interior
chambers and causing serious damage.
Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully
explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible
collection of several thousand objects. In addition to numerous pieces
of jewelry and gold, there was statuary, furniture, clothes, a chariot,
weapons, and numerous other objects that shed a brilliant light on
the culture and history of ancient Egypt. The most splendid find was
a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other.
Inside the final coffin, made out of solid gold, was the mummified
body of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for 3,200 years. Most
of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum.

1917 The Bolsheviks offer an armistice between Russia and
the Central Powers. 1916 El Gobierno revolucionario
griego de Eleutherios Venizelos declara la guerra a Alemania. 1907
The Duma lends support to Czar in St. Petersburg, who claims he has renounced
autocracy. 1901 The Hope diamond is brought to New
York. 1897 Las colonias españolas de Cuba
y de Puerto Rico consiguen la autonomía.

^1872 Surveyor King exposes Great Diamond Hoax
The Great Diamond Hoax, one of the
most notorious mining swindles of the time, is exposed with an article
in the San Francisco Evening Bulletin.
Fraudulent gold and silver mines were common in the years following
the California Gold Rush of 1849. Swindlers fooled many eager greenhorns
by "salting" worthless mines with particles of gold dust to make them
appear mineral-rich. However, few con men were as daring as Kentucky
cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack, who convinced San Francisco
capitalists to invest in a worthless mine in the northwestern corner
of Colorado. Arnold and Slack
played their con perfectly. They arrived in San Francisco in 1872
and tried to deposit a bag of uncut diamonds at a bank. When questioned,
the two men quickly disappeared, acting as if they were reluctant
to talk about their discovery. Intrigued, a bank director named William
Ralston tracked down the men. Assuming he was dealing with unsophisticated
country bumpkins, he set out to take control of the diamond mine.
The two cousins agreed to take a blindfolded mining expert to the
site; the expert returned to report that the mine was indeed rich
with diamonds and rubies. Joining
forces with a number of other prominent San Francisco financiers,
Ralston formed the New York Mining and Commercial Company, capitalized
at $10 million, and began selling stock to eager investors. As a show
of good faith, Arnold and Slack received about $600'000 — small
change in comparison to the supposed value of the diamond mine. Convinced
that the American West must have many other major deposits of diamonds,
at least 25 other diamond exploration companies formed in the subsequent
months. Clarence King, the then-little-known
young leader of a geographical survey of the 40th parallel, finally
exposed the cousins' diamond mine as a hoax. A brilliant geologist
and mining engineer, King was suspicious of the mine from the start.
He correctly deduced the location of the supposed mine, raced off
to investigate, and soon realized that the swindlers had salted the
mine — some of the gems he found even showed jewelers-cut marks.
Back in San Francisco, King
exposed the fraud in the newspapers and the Great Diamond Hoax collapsed.
Ralston returned $80'000 to each of his investors, but he was never
able to recover the $600'000 given to the two cousins. Arnold lived
out the few remaining years of his life in luxury in Kentucky before
dying of pneumonia in 1878. Slack apparently squandered his share
of the money, for he was last reported working as a coffin maker in
New Mexico. King's role in exposing the fraud brought him national
recognition — he became the first director of the United States
Geological Survey.

^1863 Mine Run campaign begins
Union General George Meade [31 Dec
1815 – 06 Nov 1872] moves against
the Army of Northern Virginia of General Robert E. Lee [19 Jan 1807
– 12 Oct 1870] after months of inaction following the Battle
of Gettysburg. Meade's troops found no weaknesses in Lee's lines,
and the offensive was abandoned after only five days. Meade was under
pressure from the Lincoln administration to act before the end of
1863. For months after Gettysburg, the two battered armies nursed
their wounds and gazed warily at one another across the Rappahannock
River. In October 1863, Lee attempted to move his army between the
Union force and Washington DC, but his offensive failed at Bristoe
Station. Now, Meade hoped to attack part of Lee's army.
On 26 November Meade sends three corps against Lee's right flank around
a small valley called Mine Run. Unfortunately for the Union, the Third
Corps of William French took the wrong road and did not cross the
Rapidan River (just south of the Rappahannock) on time. Lee moved
part of his army east to meet the threat. While French's corps wandered
in the Virginia wilderness, Confederate General Edward Johnson moved
to block their advance. French's men fought Johnson's at Payne's Farm;
French suffered 950 men killed and wounded to Johnson's 545. The blunder
cost the Union heavily. Lee's men took up strong positions along Mine
Run, and Meade realized that to attack head on would be foolish. By
01 December, Meade began pulling his men back across the Rappahannock
River and into winter quarters. There would be no further activity
between the two great armies until spring.

1863 Siege of Knoxville, Tennessee continues.

^1862 (or 1864?) Uncle Tom's Cabin's author
meets President Lincoln. President
Abraham Lincoln [12 Feb 1809 – 15 Apr 1865] receives at
the White
House
Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist author of Uncle
Tom's Cabin. Legend has it that Lincoln said upon meeting
her, "So, you're the little woman that wrote the book that made this
great war!" Harriet
Elizabeth Beecher was born on 14 June 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut,
the seventh child of Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher. Stowe
studied at private schools in Connecticut and worked as a teacher
in Hartford for five years until her father moved to Cincinnati in
1832. She accompanied him and continued to teach while writing stories
and essays. In 1836, she married Calvin
Ellis Stowe, with whom she had seven children. In 1843 she published
her first book, The Mayflower; or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters
Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims. While living in Cincinnati,
Stowe encountered fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad.
In reaction to recently tightened fugitive
laws, she wrote Uncle
Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly which, on 5
June 1851, began to appear in serial form in the Washington National
Era, an abolitionist weekly. Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery
story would be published in forty installments over the next ten months.
For her story Mrs. Stowe was paid $300.
Although the weekly had a limited circulation, its audience increased
as reader after reader passed their copy along to another. In March
1852, a Boston publisher decided to issue Uncle
Tom's Cabin as a book and it became an instant best-seller.
Three hundred thousand copies were sold the first year, and about
two million copies were sold worldwide by 1857. For one three-month
period Stowe reportedly received $10'000 in royalties. Across the
nation people discussed the novel and hotly debated the most pressing
socio-political issue dramatized in its narrative, slavery.
Stowe traveled to England in 1853, where
she was welcomed as a literary hero. Along with Ralph Waldo Emerson,
she became one of the original contributors to The Atlantic,
which launched in November 1857. In
1863, when Lincoln announced the end of slavery (though in the rebel
states only), she danced in the streets. Stowe continued to write
throughout her life. In 1853, she published The
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, a compilation of documents and
testimonies in support of disputed details of her indictment of slavery.
In 1856 she published Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp,
in which she depicted the deterioration of a society resting on a
slave basis. Later she wrote novels, of which The Minister's Wooing
(1859) is the best known. Stowe
died on 01 July 1896.

Search
American Memory on the term Uncle Tom's Cabin to find a
wide variety of material concerning the book, subsequent theatrical
adaptations, and related music. See, for example, the musical pieces
"Eliza's
Flight," published in 1852 and "Eva
to Her Papa."

A
search on the term slavery in Narratives
of the American South, 1860-1920 will reveal many non-fiction
accounts of slavery. Tupelo,
by John Hill Aughey, describes the plight of abolitionists living
in the South at the time of secession while quoting a Southern perspective
on slavery.

^1862 Manuscript sent as a Christmas present to Alice. Oxford mathematician Rev. Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson, 30, sends a handwritten manuscript called Alice's
Adventures Under Ground to Alice Liddell, 10. Dodgson, better
known by his nom de plume Lewis Carroll, made up the story one day
on a picnic with young Alice and her two sisters, the children of
one of Dodgson's colleagues.
Dodgson, born 28 January 1832 the son of a country parson, had been
brilliant at both mathematics and wordplay since childhood, when he
enjoyed making up games. However, he suffered from a severe stammer,
except when he spoke with children. He had many young friends who
enjoyed his fantastic stories: The Liddell children thought his tale
of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole was one of his best efforts,
and Alice insisted he write it down.
During a visit to the Liddells, English novelist Henry Kingsley happened
to notice the manuscript. After reading it, he suggested to Mrs. Liddell
that it be published. Dodgson revised the book as Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland and published it at his own expense,
under the name Lewis Carroll, in 1865. The story is one of the earliest
children's books written simply to amuse children, not to teach them.
The book's sequel, Through
the Looking Glass, was published in 1871. Dodgson's other
works, including a poetry collection called Phantasmagoria
and Other Poems, and another children's book, Sylvie
and Bruno, did not gain the same enduring popularity as the
Alice books. Dodgson died on 14 January 1898.
LEWIS CARROLL ONLINE:

1861 At Wheeling, a convention adopts a constitution for
new state West Virginia, which refused to secede with the rest of Virginia.

^1855 The Wakarusa War in Kansas
During the Wakarusa War, a force of
some 1500 Border Ruffians camped on the Wakarusa River advance on
Lawrence, Kansas, but retreat after they find the town to be heavily
defended by Free State forces. Lawrence, Kansas, a station on the
Underground Railroad, was a center of pre-Civil War violence over
the issue of slavery. Trouble in territorial Kansas began with the
signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by President Franklin Pierce in
1854. The act stipulated that settlers in the newly created territories
of Nebraska and Kansas would decide by popular vote whether their
territory would be free or slave. In early 1855, Kansas's first election
proved a violent affair as over 5,000 Border Ruffians invaded the
territory from western Missouri and forced the election of a pro-slavery
legislature. To prevent further bloodshed, Andrew H. Reeder, appointed
territorial governor by President Pierce, reluctantly approved the
election. A few months later, the Kansas Free State forces were formed,
armed by supporters in the North and featuring the leadership of militant
abolitionist John Brown. In May of 1856, Border Ruffians and other
pro-slavery supporters return to the Wakarusa River area, and succeed
in sacking the town of Lawrence. In retaliation, a small Free State
force under John Brown massacres five pro-slavery Kansans along the
Pottawatomie Creek. Over the next four years, raids, skirmishes, and
massacres continue in "Bleeding Kansas," as it is popularly known,
but in 1861 the irrepressible differences in the territory are swallowed
up by the full-scale outbreak of the American Civil War.

1844 El general Ramón María Narváez
y Campos es designado por primera vez presidente del Consejo de Ministros
español. 1841 First date in James Clavell's
novel Tai-Pan 1832 For 12½ cents, passengers
began riding the first streetcar railway in America. The New York City service
ran from City Hall to 14th Street.

1793 Republican calendar replaces Gregorian calendar in
France under penalty of death. 1789 In accord with
Congressional resolution, President George Washington proclaims this day
(a Thursday) to be a Thanksgiving Day (the first). National Thanksgiving
days would be periodically proclaimed by presidents, until in 1863 Abraham
Lincoln inaugurated the practice of annually setting the fourth Thursday
in November aside for Thanksgiving Day. 1778 Capt
Cook discovers Maui (Sandwich Islands) 1775 The
American Navy began using chaplains within its regular service. 1774
A congress of colonial leaders criticizes British influence in the colonies
and affirms their right to "Life, liberty and property."
1716 The first lion exhibited in America is seen in Boston. 1703 Bristol England damaged by hurricane, Royal Navy
loses 15 warships 1688 Louis XIV declares war on
the Netherlands

1585 Llegan a la ciudad de Santiago del Estero (Paraguay)
los dos primeros miembros de la Compañía de Jesús.
1539 In England, the monastery at the Fountains
Abbey was surrendered to the crown. It was the richest of the Cistercian
houses, prior to the time of the Dissolution of all monasteries in England,
under the reign of Henry VIII. 0579 Pelagius II
begins his reign as Pope.

2008 Ana Solorio, 33, ejected from an SUV which rolls over
at least 6 times on highway I-10 east in Anthony NM at 05:10 (12:10 UT.
It was headed to Georgia (to celebrate Thanksgiving Day on 27 Nov), driven
by Maury McGee, 33, whodozed off, swerved into the median and overcorrected.
In it were also Yolanda Dixon, 29, and Ana Solorio's 3 children, aged 10,
8, and 5. All are from Pasadena CA. —(081128)2004 Hans
Schaffner, 95, Swiss politician and Federal Councilor in the
1960s, President of the Confederation in 1966. —(051122)2004
Eight students, knifed shortly after midnight in their high school
dormitory in Ruzhou, Henan province, China, by Yan Yanming, 21, a man with
a junior middle school education, who broke in at 23:45 the previous day
(15:45 UT 25 Nov). He injures four other students. He is arrested at 16:00
(08:00 UT) after a failed suicide attempt and his mother reports him to
the police.2003 Hani Raba'iyah, 8, Palestinian boy,
shot from a watch tower by Israeli soldiers, as he was playing in front
of his house in Rafah, Gaza Strip.
2002 Alah al-Sabbagh and Imad Nasharti, local
commanders, respectively, of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and of the Izza-din-al-Kassam,
by a missile fired from an Israeli aircraft (or by an explosion arranged
by Shin Bet?) into the room where they are together in the Jenin refugee
camp, West Bank. Both men were on the Israeli hit list.

^
2001 Terry Lee King, 40, murdered by [his boys, 12 and 13?] or [an abuser
of his willing youngest boy?] In
Cantonment, near Pensacola, Florida, in the early morning a neighbor notices
that the King home is on fire and calls the firefighters, who, after putting
out the fire, find Terry King's body on a recliner in the living room, his
head having been bashed in with an aluminum baseball bat. The police arrests
his sons Derek, 13, and Alex, 12, and tapes their confessions.
Terry King, a print shop worker, had custody of the boys, whose mother had
not lived with them for seven years. Derek lived with foster parents for
seven years until his behavior problems became too much for them and they
returned him to his father two months before the killing.
On 16 November, the boys ran away from home and called their friend local
handyman Rick Chavis, 39, who kept them at his house. Police officers picked
up Derek on 24 November while he was visiting a girlfriend and returned
him to his father. The next day Mr. Chavis turned Alex over to the police.
The boys were reunited with their father two days before the killing.
In his confession, Derek said that he and
Alex talked about what to do if their father tried to punish them for running
away: We sat down on a swing and I told Alex If stuff gets serious,
I will defend
you.’ Alex didn't have the strength.
Derek said that on the night of the killing his father pushed Alex down
and Alex started crying. He said the boys waited until their father fell
asleep and, "I went in there and hit him once and heard a moan. I was afraid
he'd wake up and see us, so I kept on hitting him. I killed him."
The boys said they then threw the bat on
their bed, doused a blanket with charcoal lighter fluid and lighted a fire.
Derek said they went out the back door and ran.
Alex described his father's bloody head and bloated face and recalled his
father's last breaths as "sort of like a sound like the person has a slightly
stopped-up nose." Four months later,
in an appearance before a grand jury, the boys would recant their stories,
saying that they had been covering up for Rick Chavis, who had been more
than a friend to Alex, who had written in his notebook: Before I met
Rick I was straight. But now I'm gay, and would later testify at trial:
"I was in love with Rick, and he let me play video games and stuff. It was
funner over at his house, I guess. So
the same prosecutor decides to accuse Chavis of being the sole killer, in
one trial, and, in another trial, to claim Chavis is innocent, accusing
Derek and Alex, tried as adults, to be the murderers and arsonists.
On 30 August 2002 a jury brings in a verdict
in the trial of Rick Chavis, but it is sealed, not to be made public until
the boys' trial , which starts on 03 September 2002, is concluded.
Chavis will still go on trial in October
on charges of lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 16 years of age,
a second-degree felony punishable by 15 years in prison. Chavis, who pleaded
no contest in the mid-1980's to having sex with two teenage boys, has pleaded
not guilty to the pending charge. Then Chavis will stand trial in November,
again in relation to the murder, this time on charges of accessory after
the fact, a third-degree felony punishable by 30 years in prison, and tampering
with or fabricating evidence, a third-degree felony punishable by 5 years
in prison. At the conclusion of the
trial of Derek and Alex, as adults (!!!), the jury convicts them on Friday
06 Sep 2002 of second-degree murder and of arson. Then the Chavis verdict
is unsealed: the boys' jury is shocked to learn that he was acquitted![Photo: defendants Derek King, 14, right, and his brother Alex King,
13, left, stand as the jury leaves the courtroom to begin deliberation in
their murder trial, Friday, Sept. 6, 2002, in Pensacola, Fla. The King brothers
are charged with murdering their father Terry King. >] But a circuit judge, on Thursday 17
October 2002, throws out the convictions of the two brothers because their
rights were violated by the unusual and bizarre way prosecutors
simultaneously presented two theories of the crime, in their trial and in
that of Chavis.. The judge
says that he will order a new trial for the boys, and in the meantime will
encourage the prosecution and defense to work out a deal. The brothers,
because they were tried as adults, were facing prison sentences of 22 years
to life for the second-degree murder and of 30 years for the arson.
On 14 November the deal
has been reached. Alex and Derek King plead guilty to third-degree murder.
As a result, they will be spared the much lengthier sentences they faced
if the jury verdict had stood. Alex, 13, will serve seven years in prison
and Derek, 14, will serve eight years. As part of the deal, the brothers
were required to provide statements admitting to their roles in the killing.
They also pleaded guilty to burning the family home to cover up their actions,
and the agreement allows concurrent sentences of the same lengths for the
arson. They are not eligible for parole but will receive credit for time
served, reducing their sentences by about a year. The prosecutor and defense
lawyers said the agreement held the boys accountable for their actions but
combined punishment with the possibility for rehabilitation.
The boys will be sent to a state prison that houses juveniles separately
from adults. They will receive counseling and take part in activities including
academic and vocational training and sports programs in a heavily guarded,
campuslike setting. The court-appointed mediator said the plea deal was
intended to provide structure for the boys, whose mother left them when
they were young.

2001 Teissir al-Ajarmi, 22, suicide bomber, Hamas militant
from the Jebaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, who succeeds only in lightly
injuring two Israeli border policemen near the Erez crossing between Gaza
and Israel, the Israeli military said. The Islamic. 2000
Khalil Taher, Bedouin tracker sergeant major with the Israeli army,
shortly before 07:00, as Hezbollah guerillas detonate by remote control
a bomb he was examining at about 1 km inside the "Chebaa Farms"
area which Israel considers part of the formerly Syrian Golan Heights which
it annexed in 1981, but which Lebanon and Syria consider Lebanese.1985 Pablo Serrano, escultor español.
1977 Ruth
Moufang, mathematician.

^1973 Albert DeSalvo, Boston Strangler,
Green Man, Measuring Man, stabbed by a fellow
prisoner. On
4 January 1964 occured the Boston Strangler's last murder. Mary Sullivan
was raped and strangled to death in her Boston apartment. The killer
left a card reading "Happy New Year" between the victim's toes. Sullivan
would turn out to be the last woman killed by the notorious Boston
Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, who had terrorized the city between 1962
and 1964, raping and killing 13 women.
DeSalvo's serial-killing career was shaped at an early age. His father
would bring home prostitutes and have sex with them in front of the
family, before brutally beating his wife and children. On one occasion,
DeSalvo's father knocked out his mother's teeth and then broke her
fingers one by one while she lay unconscious on the floor. DeSalvo
himself was sold by his father to work as a farm laborer, along with
two of his sisters. Unfortunately, DeSalvo learned the sadistic lessons
well because he was soon torturing the neighborhood pets.
In the late 1950s, as a young man, DeSalvo acquired the first of his
criminal nicknames. He knocked on the doors of young women, claiming
to represent a modeling agency. He told the women that he needed to
take their measurements and proceeded to crudely fondle the women
as he used his tape measure. His stint as the Measuring Man
came to an end with his arrest on 17 March 1960, and he spent nearly
a year in prison. When DeSalvo
was released, his next series of crimes were far worse. For nearly
two years, he broke into hundreds of apartments in New England, tied
up the women and sexually assaulted them. He always wore green handyman
clothes during his assaults and became known as the Green Man.
In 1962, DeSalvo started killing
his victims. He strangled Anna Slesers with her own housecoat and
tied the ends in a bow, which would become his trademark. Throughout
the summer of 1962, DeSalvo raped and killed elderly women in Boston.
However, by winter he began attacking younger women, always leaving
the rope or cord used to strangle the victim in a bow. Police, who
were stymied in their attempts to stop the newly dubbed Boston
Strangler, even brought in a psychic to inspect the clothes
of the victims. However, it
was DeSalvo himself who enabled the police to close the case. On 27
October 1964, after raping another young woman, he suddenly stopped
before killing her. The victim called the police and gave a description
of her attacker, which enabled the police to arrest DeSalvo. However,
they tied him only to the Green Man sexual attacks until he confessed
the murders to his attorney, F. Lee Bailey. Under a deal with prosecutors,
DeSalvo never was charged or convicted with the Boston Strangler murders,
getting a life sentence instead for the Green Man rapes. Still, DeSalvo's
life term was short. He was stabbed to death by an unidentified fellow
inmate at Walpole State Prison on 26 November 1973.

1970 B O Davis Sr., 93, first black US general, in Chicago
1968 Polozii,
mathematician.1960 Gilberto Alzate Avendaño,
abogado, periodista y político colombiano. 1949 Mateo
Hernández Sánchez, escultor español. 1943: 1015 US servicemen and 123 others as, during World
War II, the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying US soldiers,
is hit by a German missile off Algeria.1943 Joseph van Sluijters
Georges de Feure, Dutch painter born on 06 September
1868. — MORE
ON DE FEURE AT ART 4 NOVEMBER
with links to images. 1939 James Naismith Basketball
inventor1936 Victor Léon Jean Pierre Charreton,
French artist born on 02 March 1864.

^1933 Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes, murderers, in
lynching acclaimed by governor and public.
A mob of fifteen thousand in San Jose, California, storms the jail
where Thurmond and Holmes are being held as suspects in the kidnapping
and murder of Brooke Hart, the 22-year-old son of a local storeowner.
The mob of angry citizens proceeded to lynch the accused men and then
pose them for pictures. On 09
November, Brooke Hart was abducted by men in a Studebaker. His family
received a $40,000 ransom demand and, soon after, Hart's wallet was
found on a tanker ship in a nearby bay. The investigative trail led
to Holmes and Thurmond, who implicated each other in separate confessions.
Both acknowledged, though, that Hart had been pistol-whipped and then
thrown off the San Mateo Bridge. After Hart's body washed ashore on
25 November, a vigilante mob began to form. Newspapers reported the
possibility of a lynching and local radio stations broadcast the plan.
Not only did Governor James Rolph reject the National Guard's offer
to send assistance, he reportedly said he would pardon those involved
in the lynching. On 26 November, the angry mob converged at the jail
and beat the guards, using a battering ram to break into the cells.
Thurmond and Holmes were dragged out and hanged from large trees in
a nearby park. The public seemed
to welcome the gruesome act of vigilante violence. After the incident,
pieces of the lynching ropes were sold to the public. Though the San
Jose News declined to publish pictures of the lynching, it condoned
the act in an editorial. Eighteen-year-old Anthony Cataldi bragged
that he had been the leader of the mob but he was not held accountable
for his participation. At Stanford University, a professor asked his
students to stand and applaud the lynching. Perhaps most disturbing,
Governor Rolph publicly praised the mob. "The best lesson ever given
the country," said Governor Rolph. "I would like to parole all kidnappers
in San Quentin to the fine, patriotic citizens of San Jose."

1926 John Moses Browning, inventor estadounidense. 1921 Joseph Bail, French artist bon on 22 January 1863.1901 Joseph Henry Thayer, US scholar best remembered for
his Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. 1892
Charles-Martial-Allemand Lavigerie, 67, cardinal
and archbishop of Algiers and Carthage (now Tunis, Tunisia) whose dream
to convert Africa to Christianity prompted him to found the society of Missionaries
of Our Lady of Africa of Algeria, or White Fathers..Among his writings
are a doctorate thesis: Essai sur l'école chrétienne d'Edesse
(1850); Exposé des erreurs doctrinales du Jansénisme
(1858), Decreta concilii provincialis Algeriensis in Africa (1873);
Œuvres choises (Paris, 1884); Documents pour la fondation de
l'œuvre antiesclavagiste (1889). 1885 El general Francisco
Serrano y Domínguez fallece en Madrid.1883
Isabella Van Wagener "Sojourner
Truth", born a slave, she experienced visions and voices,
which she attributed to God, and was one of the most charismatic abolitionists
and suffragists of her day. She was the co-author of Narrative
of Sojourner Truth (1850), Narrative
of Sojourner Truth (1850), Narrative
of Sojourner Truth (1878)1882 Thomas LeClear,
US painter born on 11 March 1818. — MORE
ON LECLEAR AT ART 4 NOVEMBER
with links to images. 1861 Wilhelm Hensel, German
painter and draftsman born on 06 July 1794. — more1855 Adam Mickiewicz, poeta y patriota polaco. 1851
Louis-Philippe Crépin, French artist born in 1772.

^1851 Nicolas-Jean
de Dieu Soult, duc de Dalmatie, born on 29
March 1760, dies in his native Saint-Amans-Soult, France. He was a
military leader and political figure who was noted for his courage
in battle and his opportunism in politics.
Upon the death of his father in 1785, Soult enlisted in the infantry.
At the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789–1792), he was
a sergeant at Strasbourg. He served under several commanders and was
made a general by François-Joseph Lefebvre [20 Oct 1755 –
14 Sep 1820] for his conduct in the Battle of Fleurus (June 1794).
In March 1799 he replaced the wounded Lefebvre at the Battle of Stokach.
Soult built a reputation for vigor,
boldness, and method. Under Napoleon [15 Aug 1769 – 05 May 1821]
he was put in charge of the southern part of the Kingdom of Naples
(1800–1802) and in 1804 was made a marshal of France. His reputation
was further enhanced by his significant role in French victories at
Ulm
(20 Oct 1805), Austerlitz
(02 Dec 1805), and Jena
(14 Oct 1806), though he was less successful in Poland at Eylau
(08 Feb 1807) and Heilsberg
(10 Jun 1807). Made duc de Dalmatie and sent to Spain late in 1808,
he was soon put in charge of all French armies involved in the Peninsular
War (1808-1814), where he was opposed by the English under Arthur
Wellesley (later duke of Wellington) [01 May 1769 – 14 Sep
1852]. Soult remained in Spain for most of the next five years, but
eventually Wellesley forced his outnumbered troops to retreat and
to loose at Toulouse
(10 Apr 1814), four days after Napoleon had abdicated.
During the First Restoration (1814) Soult declared himself a royalist,
but during Napoleon's Hundred Days (1815) he again supported Bonaparte,
acting as his chief of staff at Waterloo
(18 Jun 1815). Soult was exiled at the start of the Second Restoration
(1815–1830) but was recalled in 1819. On 03 December 1831 he
entered Lyon at the head of troops sent for the brutal repression
of the uprising of the canuts. Under
King Louis-Philippe he presided over three ministries (October 1832–July
1834, May 1839–March 1840, and October 1840–September
1847) and was usually minister of war as well as president of the
council; he was responsible for the French conquest of Algeria during
the 1840s. In 1848, when Louis-Philippe was overthrown, Soult declared
himself a republican. His Mémoires appeared in three
volumes in 1854. — More than 20 years after the Napoleonic
Wars had ended Marshal Nicolas Soult was representing France at the
28 June 1838 coronation of Queen Victoria [24 May 1819 – 22
Jan 1901] when he was grabbed by the arm by none other than the Duke
of Wellington. The conqueror of Napoleon Bonaparte is reported to
have said: "I have you at last." The comment refers to one of the
final campaigns of the Peninsular War where Wellington was forced
to chase Soult's army through the Pyrenees as the Frenchman led him
a merry dance. Such was the respect that one of the greatest commanders
of all time had for the son of a baker.
Soult had joined the French army at 16 and his abilities saw him an
officer within six years. He fought at Fleurus (26 Jun 1794), received
a promotion to general of brigade in 1794, and then was stationed
on the Rhine. He took part at Stockach (25 Mar 1799), became general
of division and fought at Zürich
(26 Sep 1799). Becoming a marshal in 1804, Soult was given the honor
of taking the vital Pratzen Heights at Austerlitz and won huge praise
from Bonaparte for his tactical abilities. He fought well at Jena,
Eylau, Heilsberg and was rewarded by becoming the Duke of Dalmatia.
Known for his greed, Soult enjoyed his titles and the accompanying
wealth. In 1808, Soult went to
Spain and chased Sir John
Moore [13 Nov 1761 – 16
Jan 1809] to La
Coruña (16 Jan 1809) where, although beaten, he put up
a monument to his fallen foe and won great respect from the British
for doing so. Being surprised by Wellington at Oporto
(12 May 1809) lessened his standing, although he followed that by
beating the Spanish at Ocana
(19 Nov 1809). In 1811, Soult found himself up against Marshal Beresford
at Albuera and was stunned to lose that bloody battle. In awe of British
courage, he said later he had beaten the redcoats, it was just that
they did not know when they were beaten. During the 1813 Campaign,
Soult fought at Bautzen but was rushed back to Spain to recover the
situation after the debacle of Vitoria. His leadership proved outstanding
and, in the face of great odds and a supremely confident British army,
managed to stay the inevitable for almost a year.
Joining with Bonaparte for the 100 Days' Campaign he became the emperor's
chief of staff and did not perform as well as perhaps he could have.
In later years, Soult was used in many senior government position,
including Minister of War, and became one of only a few honored with
the title Marshal-General of France.

1788 George Robertson, British artist born in some year
from 1742 to 1748. 1779 Pieter Jan van Liender,
Dutch artist born on 23 December 1727.1757 Jan Jakob Spoede,
Flemish artist born in 1680.1686 Niels Stensen “Nicolas
Steno” [10 Jan 1638–], Danish anatomist and geologist. He
discovered the parotid gland which produces saliva and the Stensen's duct
which connects to the mouth. He demonstrated that the heart is a muscle
(not a furnace as Descartes and others believed). As a geologist he explained
geological strata and investigated why seashells are found in mountains.
He was a Lutheran who became a Catholic on 07 November 1667, was ordained
a Catholic priest of the diocese of Florence, Italy, on 13 April 1675, and
on 19 September 1677 consecrated a bishop as the 2nd Vicar Apostolic of
the Nordic Missions of Germany (erected on 28 April 1667). In 1680 he was
appointed auxiliary bishop of Münster, Germany, and he resigned in
1683. On 23 October 1988 he was beatified by pope John Paul II [the
pope's speech]. —(070902)1504 Isabel I,
llamada La católica, primera reina de Castilla y de Aragón,
fallece en Medina del Campo. 0399 St Siricius, Pope
0311 Bishop Peter of Alexandria, summarily martyred
over the Arian controversy.

1954 Les mandarins, novela de Simone de Beauvoir,
se publica. 1940 Bombieri,
mathematician.1931 Adolfo Perez Esquivel Buenos
Argentina, (1980 Nobel Peace Prize) 1924 George Segal
NY, sculptor lifelike mixed-media figures (Bus Driver) 1924
Mongolian People's Republic proclaimed 1922 Charles
M Schulz, American cartoonist who created Peanuts starring
Charlie Brown, and died during the night when his farewell Peanuts
strip was being printed.1922 José María López
de Letona y Núñez del Pino, político e ingeniero
español. 1918Patricio
Aylwin Azócar, Chilean Christian Democrat politician,
elected to the Senate on 07 March 1965, elected president of the Senate
in 1971, opponent of Allende [26 Jul 1908 – 11 Sep 1973] and, later,
of Pinochet
[25 Nov 1915~], elected President on 14
December 1989 as candidate of the opposition coalition, inaugurated as president
on 11 March 1990 for a term of four years, at the end of which, on 11 March
1994, he was succeeded by Eduardo
Frei Ruiz-Tagle [24 Jun 1942~], of the same Christian Democrat Party,
who had won the election of 11 December 1993.

^1912 Eugène Ionesco, Romania,
French dramatist, father of theater of the absurd
While working as a proofreader, Ionesco decided to learn English.
The stilted commonplaces of his textbook inspired the masterly catalog
of senseless platitudes that constitutes La Cantatrice Chauve.
In its most famous scene, two strangers — who are exchanging
banalities about how the weather is faring, where they live, and how
many children they have — stumble upon the astonishing discovery
that they are indeed man and wife; it is a brilliant example of Ionesco's
recurrent themes of self-estrangement and the difficulty of communication.
In rapid succession Ionesco
wrote a number of plays, all developing the "antilogical" ideas of
La Cantatrice Chauve; these included brief and violently
irrational sketches and also a series of more elaborate one-act plays
in which many of his later themes — especially the fear and
horror of death — begin to make their appearance. Among these,
La Leçon (1951), Les Chaises (1952), and
Le Nouveau Locataire (1955) are notable successes.
In La Leçon, a timid
professor uses the meaning he assigns to words to establish tyrannical
dominance over an eager female pupil.
In Les Chaises, an elderly couple await the arrival of an
audience to hear the old man's last message to posterity, but only
empty chairs accumulate on stage. Feeling confident that his message
will be conveyed by an orator he has hired, the old man and his wife
commit a double suicide. The orator turns out to be afflicted with
aphasia, however, and can speak only gibberish.
In contrast to these shorter works, it was only with difficulty that
Ionesco mastered the techniques of the full-length play: Amédée
(1954), Tueur sans gages (1959), and Le Rhinocéros
(1959) lack the dramatic unity that he finally achieved with Le
Roi se meurt (1962). This success was followed by Le Piéton
de l'air (1963). With La Soif et la faim (1966) he returned
to a more fragmented type of construction.
In the next decade he wrote Jeux de massacre (1970); Macbett
(1972, a retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth); and Ce
formidable bordel (1973). Le Rhinocéros, whose protagonist retains his humanity
in a world where humans are mutating into beasts, remains Ionesco's
most popular play. He died on 28 March 1994.

1907 El pelícano de August Strindberg se
estrena en Estocolmo. 1905 Emlyn Williams Wales,
actor/playwright (David Copperfield) 1904 Alejo Carpentier,
escritor cubano. 1894 Norbert
Wiener US, mathematician. He would contribute to many areas
of mathematics including cybernetics (a term he coined), stochastic processes,
quantum theory and during World War II he worked on gunfire control. Wiener
died on 18 March 1964. 1876 Willis Haviland Carrier,
inventor of the first air conditioning system to control both temperature
and humidity. 1876 Bart Anthony van der Leck, Dutch
painter who died in 1958. — more
with links to images.1871 Luigi
Sturzo, sacerdote y político italiano. 1867
The refrigerated railroad car is patented by J.B. Sutherland of
Detroit, Michigan. 1860 Simoni Stefan Simony, Austrian
artist who died in 1950. 1857 Ferdinand de Saussure
Switzerland, linguist (Cours de Linguistique Générale) 1832 Mary Edwards Walker US, doctor/women's rights leader

^
1827 Ellen Gould Harmon White, a founder of the Seventh
Day Adventist Church, who died on 16 July 1915. Her prophecies and
other guidance were central to that denomination's early growth.
Ellen Gould Harmon sustained a serious
injury at the age of nine that left her facially disfigured and for
some time unable to attend school. Her education ended with a brief
period at the Westbrook Seminary and Female College of Portland, Maine,
in 1839. The following year she underwent a religious experience at
a Methodist camp meeting, and she was baptized in 1842. A short time
later she followed her family in becoming a follower of William Miller,
the Adventist prophet who was preaching the imminent return of Christ
(fixed for 22 October 1844). Undismayed later by the apparent failure
of Miller's prophecy, Harmon retained the Adventist view.
In December 1844 Harmon experienced the first of what she would later
claim were some 2000 visions. She began an itinerant ministry to discouraged
Millerites, bringing news of the future and messages of encouragement
gained from her visions. In 1846 she married the Reverend James S.
White, another Adventist minister. They traveled together through
New England and gradually moved farther afield, spreading the Adventist
faith. She published A Sketch of the Christian Experience and
Views of Ellen G. White (1851) and then her Supplement to
the Experience and Views of Ellen G. White (1854).
After the Whites moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1855, that city
became the center of Adventist activity. Representatives of scattered
Adventist congregations met there in 1860 and adopted the name Seventh-day
Adventists. Three years later the church adopted a formal denominational
structure. Throughout the work of organization and the establishment
of an Adventist orthodoxy, Ellen White's visions were a guiding force.
The scriptural interpretations that came to her were promptly accepted.
Much of the church program thus revealed was published in her Testimonies
for the Church, which eventually grew from 16 pages in its 1855 edition
to fill nine volumes. Her views on health, especially her opposition
to the use of coffee, tea, meat, and drugs, were incorporated into
Seventh-day Adventist practice.
In 1866 White helped establish the Western Health Reform Institute
in Battle Creek; later, as the Battle Creek Sanitarium, it became
famous for its work in the field of diet and health food and was the
model for many other sanatoriums. In 1874 White helped found Battle
Creek College, an Adventist institution of which her husband was named
president. Under her influence
the Adventist movement was actively abolitionist before the Civil
War, and during the 1860s and '70s White was a prominent temperance
advocate. In 1880 she and her husband published Life Sketches
of Elder James White and His Wife, Mrs. Ellen G. White. After
her husband's death the following year, White lived for four years
in Healdsburg, California. She traveled and lectured in Europe (1885–1888)
and was an Adventist missionary in Australia (1891–1900), where
she established a school that later became Avondale College. After
her return to the United States, White led a movement to remove Adventist
institutions from Battle Creek. The college moved to Berrien Springs,
Michigan, as Emmanuel Missionary College (from 1960 Andrews University),
and in 1903 the church headquarters and newspaper relocated to Takoma
Park, Maryland. From that year White lived mainly in St. Helena, California.

1825 Kappa Alpha Societyfraternity
is formed at Union College
in Schenectady, New York, from group The Philosophers, Rev.
John Hart Hunter, John McGeoch, Prof. Isaac Wilbur Jackson, Dr. Thomas Hun,
Orlando Meads, James Proudfit and Hon. Joseph Anthony Constant of the class
of 1826, and Rev. Arthur Burtis and Joseph Law of the Class of 1827. In
the words 1792 Sarah Moore Grimk‚ US antislavery,
women's rights advocate

^1731 William Cowper, England, preromantic
poet, author of The
Diverting History of John Gilpin, translator of Poems
of Madame de La Mothe Guyon. Cowper's
life was full of personal anguish. At five, his mother died, and Cowper
was sent to a boarding school where the older boys were cruel and
rough. At eighteen William began to study law, and fell in love with
his cousin Theodora Cowper, but her father did not approve of the
match. Neither one of them ever married.
After completing law studies, William began to suffer from depression.
At one point, he became so despondent that he attempted suicide. After
time in a private asylum, he recovered his reason. Cowper moved to
the country town of Olney, where John Newton was pastor. Soon they
were close friends. In 1771, Newton, became concerned with Cowper's
increasing melancholy. Hoping to lift his spirits by keeping him busy,
Newton suggested that he and Cowper co-author a book of hymns. Newton
himself often wrote hymns to illustrate his Sunday sermons. "Amazing
Grace" is one of the 280 hymns he wrote for the Olney Hymns.
Cowper wrote 68 of the hymns, including "Oh for a closer walk with
God," "There is a fountain filled with blood," and "God moves in a
mysterious way":

God
moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

The Olney Hymns first introduced
Cowper to the world. Cowper kept writing poetry and became famous.
His The
Diverting History of John Gilpin is a children's favorite.
In his best work, The Task Cowper continues to praise his
Creator. He once said that of all the gifts God gives to us, God,
Himself is the greatest gift. (COWPER ONLINE:)

1607 John Harvard England, clergyman/scholar, major benefactor
to Harvard University (library & half his estate) 1395 (before
27 November) Antonio Pisanello (or Pisano) di Puccio, Italian painter,
draftsman, and medallist, who was the last and most brilliant artist of
the ornate, courtly International Gothic style. He died on 08 October or
14 July 1455. — MORE
ON PISANELLO AT ART 4 NOVEMBER
with links to images.